Thursday, November 02, 2006

New Month....New Reviews

Looking for a book to read? The rain has returned to San Francisco. And that means there will be plenty of hours spent indoors as the rain falls and falls and falls. So why not pick-up a book? Check-out the latest reviews by teens at the Chinatown Branch.

SHOOTER-Walter Dean Myers

The book Shooter by Walter Dean Myers is a fictional book based on shooting cases that are in high schools. If you look though the newspaper and reviews of high schools in the past year, you can tell that the shooting cases in the schools had gone up a bunch. Shooter really illustrates the point of view of the teenagers in the shooting cases. The book, Shooter, is basically a bunch of interviews that the police did in order to see who and what happened at this school where a shooting case had started. It was a really serious case because of the suicidal behind the case as well. In one of the scenes in the book, the main character was actually writing his name in blood at the walls. There was a series of shootings at the school and a lot of students were harmed in the shoot out. In this event, you can tell that the plan of a couple of kids can create a lot of danger in one school. Shooter shows that cases like these are a serious issue and we have to care about it. I find the book a really fun, but a very emotional book to read as well.-Jennifer, Chinatown Branch

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald

This is the best book I ever read, because from this book, you can see how evil people can be. There are many characters that want only money, the like to show off, everybody cheated with each other and they didn’t even know until the end of the book. Like Gatsby and Daisy love each other, but Daisy married Tom because Tom’s old money. What was worse is Tom like Myrtle, which is Wilson’s wife. They are all dishonest.

I think the ending is pretty good because Gatsby and Myrtle died. It’s good for Tom and Daisy. They probably had a better life without Gatsby and Myrtle.-Ashley, Chinatown Branch

The Minister's Daughter-Julie Hearn

The novel, The Minister’s Daughter, by Julie Hearn is intriguing and packs a punch of mystery. The minister’s daughter, Grace, accused the cunning woman’s daughter, Nell, a witch. The novel is set in a time when people are heavily influenced by the Church and punished people who believe otherwise. In a village where witches are condemned, how was Nell supposed to escape the noose of the gallows? And how was Patience supposed to confess the dark secret that she has? The book circles around three characters that conflict each other: Nell, the cunning woman’s daughter; Patience, the simple looking, simple minded sister of Grace; and Grace, the beautiful and the sly daughter of the minister. This is a suspenseful book you wouldn’t want to let go till you finish the book.-Huiting Rose, Chinatown Branch

The Joy Luck Club-Amy Tan

Joy Luck Club is a story of four women with different hopes and dreams that come together from a hard life in China in hopes to have a better life in the US. They found each other and became best friends but none of them truly told their own stories about themselves till the very end. They each have children, all Americanized, closed-off from their Chinese cultures because, at the time, it was not important. This book emphasizes in how a Chinese mother’s impact on their Americanized daughters, the assimilation of different cultures that changes their lives, the daughters who wanted freedom to search for who they are and love their life in their own way. The mothers, upon seeing their daughters are reminded of their youth, of how they were similar to their daughters when they were young; always looking for a better life than what their parents had planned out. This book taught me how to be a better person. You would have thought it looks easy but being a Chinese-American is hard. We must understand how to conjoin these two cultures. I must live in the old ways while I must adopt the new. The book showed me the other side of China that I never notice but exists. I never thought of how my mother lived when she was young, how her Chinese culture has impacted me. Other people should read it too because they would know and understand more about us. It teaches how we need to continue to a new world but also not forgetting our history of who we are. Without history we would not exist.-Mona, Chinatown Branch

Have you read these books? Post your comments. Do you have a book to recommend? Post your comments.

*Wonder why it rains so much in San Francisco this time of year?check out this book